Midnight Connection
by cutekittenlady
Summary: Zarkon is left alone with his son for the night, but finds that he requires some input in how he goes about stopping a crying infant. Black Paladin Zarkon AU


Alfor stirred unwillingly from his light sleep. The fact that he was suddenly awake didn't surprise him any. His nights sleep being interrupted had become such a common occurrence as of late, that Alfor would honestly have been more surprised if he'd actually slept through the night.

What was unusual was the fact that the cause of his sudden awakening wasn't immediately apparent. Normally when Alfor found himself waking up there was a bouncing over energetic baby girl on his gut either scared out of her wits from some dream, or asking for a snack or a drink of water. That or one of his advisors standing over him with an urgent report that needed his or Melenor's immediate attention.

As he blinked the sleep from his eyes, Alfor vaguely picked up an incessant and vaguely familiar beeping sound somewhere in the dark. Sitting up slowly as to not wake his wife, he craned his neck forward to try and pick out the source of the noise. A blinking light on his dresser table drew his attention immediately.

Getting up and crossing the room, the king picked up the beeping comm, and opened the connection. The image screen emerged, lighting up Alfor's tiny corner of the room, thought his bleary eyes weary from sleep couldn't make who it was.

"Yes?" Alfor yawned. "Who is it?"

"It's me." Zarkon's gruff voice answered.

Blinking away most of the remaining sleep in his eyes, Alfor immediately responded in a far clearer tone, "Is something the matter?"

"I…" The stolid man hesitated before sighing, "I need your help."

Alfor was stunned into a shocked silence. Emperor Zarkon of the Galra Empire was a man who never asked for help with anything. Not even when he was being dog piled by five enemies at once.

In truth, this stubborn pride was simultaneously an admirable display of competence and also rather annoying for anyone who worked with the man for more than a few hours. Even when flat on his back, and struggling to stand, the actual word _help_ or even _please_ wouldn't appear in Zarkon's vocabulary until he was well and truly up to the tips of his ears in trouble. If even then.

"What has happened?!" Alfor's voice rose unintentionally. Something he immediately recognized as he heard Melenor stir in her sleep. Lowering his voice again he asked, "Does it have to do with the alliance? With Voltron?"

"No, it's not as universal as that."

Alfor became vaguely aware of some high pitched continuous sound coming over the comm on Zarkons end but ignored it.

"Something to do with the empire? Or your planet?"

"Uh, no. I-It's more personal than that?"

The Altean king paused and tried to readjust his expectations. He had felt that only something of apocalyptic proportions could invoke such a reaction from Zarkon. Then again, Alfor reasoned, Zarkons interpersonal skills weren't exactly exceptional.

"You and Honerva aren't having trouble?"

Zarkon's expression answered the question.

"Alright, alright, but outside of that what else-"

The sound in the background finally processed.

It was a sound that had haunted Alfor's already disorganized sleep schedule for what had been the longest six months of his life. Rushing either himself or Melenor out of bed to quiet it before groggily staggering back into the folds of their bed until the next session nearly two vargas later. Making the first time they all managed to sleep through the night seem like a gift from the ancients.

It was loud. It was high pitched. It wasn't stopping anytime soon until something was done.

Alfor stared at Zarkon through the screen, and he stared back doing his best not to look as embarrassed as he almost certainly felt.

"Is that your son crying?" Alfor asked though he already knew the answer.

"Yes."

Tiredness crept back into Alfor's body as the ridiculous reality of the situation slowly crept into him. Something about his face must have shown itself to Zarkon because the other man immediately began to explain.

"He has been crying for half a varga. At first I thought he was just attempting to garner attention, but as he kept going I ruled that out as a possibility. He does not appear to be sick or injured, so that is not the cause."

Zarkon paused, apparently awaiting some kind of reply from Alfor. However, Alfor remained silent and just seemed to stare at him through the screen with a blank unamused expression. Deciding he had not quite made his position clear, Zarkon picked back up again.

"Honerva is gone for a movement on a very important alchemical excursion. We have a governess but she is on leave at the moment."

He stopped and stared expectantly through the screen.

Alfor gave a deep inhale, and then slowly exhaled as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Zarkon."

"Yes?" The galra replied, sounding hopeful.

"Have you any idea what time it is on Altea?"

Zarkon's brow furrowed and looked perplexed, "I do not see what that has to do with things."

"It's 3 a.m. Zarkon." Alfor informed him using more patience than he actually had. "Thee. A. M. I'm a king, I have royal duties, and worse, I have a toddler. Have you ever tried to reason with a toddler Zarkon?"

Zarkon glanced over his own shoulder for a moment before attempting to reply, "Not as of yet."

"Well you can't. You can only wait it out. And waiting it out requires a full night of sleep."

"I…" Zarkon stopped awkwardly, and rubbed the back of his neck. This wasn't working out at all as he had hoped. Being the only other person Zarkon knew with a child, he had hoped Alfor would know exactly what he needed to do. Something that would calm the child as soon as physically possible so that Zarkon himself could sleep. "What exactly am I supposed to do?"

Alfor glanced to the side at his bed, and then back to the comm.

"Alright what you need to do is zzzzzzzt." Suddenly the image on Alfor's side began to move and blur rapidly. His voice coming over in short intervals. "I'm zzzzt breaking zzzzt up zzzzzzt."

The connection was cut off.

On his end, Alfor turned the comm over, opened the back, removed the battery, and shoved the now depowered communication device in a drawer.

He wasn't proud of what he'd just done, but some inner voice of conviction told him that, just like the proverbial lioness and her cubs, sometimes you have to push your friends off cliffs to make them learn.

Besides, the warmth and comfort of his bed was calling to him, and Alfor found it impossible to resist.

* * *

Zarkon banged his head against the wall as Lotor continued to sit in his crib and wail. Alfor had been his first choice of assistance. He was the only one of his comrades that he knew had experience with children. Or more specifically children that were his own.

He'd called Trigel after Alfor had been cut off. Trigel didn't deal with children as a general rule, but she was also a logical thinker and excellent problem solver. Besides, he'd entertained the idea that an outside perspective might be just what he needed.

However, when she'd picked up her end of the comm, Zarkon hadn't gotten half way through his explanation before the communication was abruptly cut off. There was no pretense this time. She'd hung up.

Zarkon growled irritably and rubbed his temples. Lotor's crying was beginning to give him a headache. If it wasn't for that he might actually be impressed by the seeming capacity of his son's lungs.

When it had first began, the emperor had thought that the child would just… stop. Children had to stop crying at some point. Logically they had to. Eventually.

But Lotor hadn't stopped, and he didn't seem inclined to stop any time soon.

Clearly just leaving the baby to cry it out wasn't an option. For one he'd been crying this whole time and hadn't shown any signs of calming down. Besides that, Zarkon couldn't bring himself to leave the babe alone.

He still needed help though. Unfortunately, there was only two other people he could think to ask for assistance. He just hoped it wasn't 3AM on Rygnarath.

* * *

As it turned out, it wasn't 3AM on Rygnarath.

It was 4 AM.

Thankfully, Gyragan was a morning person and eager to talk.

"Aww, poor little cub." Gyragan tutted. "Not sure how I can help though."

"At this point I'm willing to take any advice." Zarkon sighed.

Gyragan hummed and scratched his stomach in a casual manner that the emperor couldn't help but find annoying.

"Well, I don't have any little ones myself." The yellow paladin leaned back contemplatively, "I do recall a few of the things about what my own Mama would do for my siblings and I when we got all fussy."

"Oh." That sounded promising.

"Now let me just think."

Zarkon waited as patiently as he could manage. He'd been forced to step out of the nursery temporarily in order to properly hear the transmission, but Lotor's cries were still audible even through the thick metal doors.

"Things have changed since I was a little cub, but I imagine child rearing is a near universal language. Why I remember how my dear papa would teach us how to ride a nexo. He would just set us down in the saddle, then take a stick, and-"

Zarkon sighed. Gyrgan's wistful remembrances could go on forever. It wasn't that he minded the yellow paladins sentimentality, but it was difficult to keep a conversation on track with the man when he insisted on explaining, in painful detail, exactly how something reminded him of an unnamed peer or family member.

Hoping to save time, Zarkon cut to the heard of the issue.

"Exactly how would your… dear mama, calm you and your kin when you were crying? And wouldn't stop."

Gyrgan paused and craned his neck towards the screen.

"Is he still going?"

Zarkon squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to hold back his temper, "Yes, Gyrgan. Yes, he is."

"How long has he been going?"

"Awhile. A long, long, while."

Gyrgan paused again. Then asked, "Are you going to be okay?"

"I will be if I can just get him to stop." Zarkon growled.

The other man hummed in understanding before becoming reflective once more.

"I can't say I can recall myself as a babe, but I do recall what my mother would do when my youngest sister would become inconsolable. During especially cold nights on Rygnarath, my sister would often keep my mother awake well into the night with her cries. My mother tried everything she could think of, but nothing worked. She started getting a bit run down."

"I can sympathize." Zarkon murmured under his breath as his son's cries reached a new level.

"Eventually she resorted to a method that she said her own mother had sworn by."

"Yes?" Zarkon urged growing impatient.

"She'd set my sister down in her bedding, and give her a small spoonful of nunvil. Within the next hour she was out like a light." Gyrgan explained. "She didn't do it very often, but every time she did it worked."

Zarkon's eyes furrowed as he attempted to absorb this information over the fog of his ongoing headache.

"She used… nunvil?"

"Yes." Gyrgan gave a smile, "I know the war was still going on at the time, but the chief before me had ways of getting ahold of certain trade goods. Nothing illegal you understand."

Rubbing his eyes, Zarkon found himself asking, "Isn't nunvil… an alcoholic beverage?"

Gyrgan gave this some thought, "Well… yes?"

"So what you are suggesting, if I understand correctly, is that I get my hands on some alcoholic beverage, likely wine since I doubt we have nunvil, and essentially… drug my son?"

This line of thinking appeared to not have occurred to the man previously, prompting him to answer, "I, uh, I can't say it ever really occurred to me like that."

He paused before adding, in an almost defensive way, "I did say things have changed."

Zarkon closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Good night, Gyrgan."

"I am sorry I couldn't help."

"I know." The emperor said as he closed the communication.

Leaning against the cold wall outside the nursery door, Zarkon was forced to listen to the ongoing cries of his son. It was a depressing reminder of his ongoing failure to solve what was, really, a rather simple problem.

He was an emperor. He could order armies to move, rearrange entire populations, and order men to bow at his feet.

Yet, even with all that, he couldn't even properly get a child to stop crying.

* * *

Lotor's cries had fallen in volume, but not in persistence. Even as Zarkon held him dangling in his hands, he still kept a persistent series of whimpers, and cries with the occasional wail managing to find its way in. Splitting his father's already painful head.

Setting the protesting infant back down into the crib with as much gentleness and patience he could still muster, Zarkon turned back towards the comm. He only really had one more person he could call, and there was a reason he hadn't called him first.

Blaytz wasn't a bad companion, Zarkon would never have put up with his presence otherwise, however in many ways he lacked a certain level of self control and discipline. All of his other companions lacked similarly in this sense. But while Alfor, Trigel, and Gyrgan made up for it with a knowing sense of dignity, Blaytz seemed content to glide through life with a laissez-faire that Zarkon couldn't help but find unseemly.

However, he was a good and loyal friend, as well as a not too shabby warrior even by galran standards. It was a difficult thing to admit, but there were even times when Zarkon would not have returned to his newfound family alive had it not been for the actions of the blue paladin. That was probably why, against his better judgement, he opened the connection with Nalquod.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Blaytz asked as soon as he'd picked up the message.

"No," Zarkon deadpanned before adding, with a hint of sarcasm, "is it 5 AM on Nalquod?"

"No. It's happy hour." Blaytz responded with much more blatant sarcasm. "What do you want?"

Zarkon steeled himself. This was going to be more difficult than with any of the others. For some reason, Blaytz derived a great deal of amusement from his moments of discomfort.

"I am calling to ask for… relevant information."

Blaytz stared through the screen. It was going to be one of _those_ conversations.

"What kind of _relevant information_?"

"Relevant in regards to raising well adjusted members of royalty."

There was a pause.

"Are you asking me for help?"

That was another thing about Blaytz. He had an annoying habit of picking up on things. It wasn't quite deductive reasoning. Alfor called it _social sense_.

"Should I get a recorder? I feel like this should be archived for future generations."

Zarkon sighed, "I just want him to stop crying."

"Oh it's about your kid?"

"It is about Prince Lotor, yes."

"Alright, I know what to do."

"You do?" Zarkon's voice was tinged with caution.

"Oh don't sound so surprised. I've taken care of all kinds of kids."

The father hesitated, "You aren't about to suggest I give him alcohol are you?"

Blaytz made a horrified face, "No! Gods, no! Why would you even- ugh!"

This reaction gave Zarkon an odd sense of comfort. Whatever the blue paladin had in mind, it at least wouldn't be that bad.

Blaytz snorted but quickly regained his composure, "Alright, now see, I've taken care of kids before, and when they get fussy is usually because they're hungry, tired, or uncomfortable. So here's what you have to do,"

Given that this was the quickest answer he'd been given all evening (or rather early morning given the time), Zarkon elected to not criticize his demeanor.

"First, you've got to bundle him up. Real tight. You can probably use, like, a towel or blanket or something."

Zarkon nodded along.

"Make sure he's hydrated. Give him some water."

"Makes sense."

"And then put him in a clean tub of water."

The emperor paused, "Elaborate."

"Well, I mean, clearly his skin is dry so you have to-"

What Zarkon did next was something he would never live down for years to come.

"Oh no, bzzzzt. You appear to be breaking up, uh, bzzzt."

Blaytz gave Zarkon a knowing expression.

"You're supposed to shake the screen."

Zarkon paused. Then shook the screen.

"Clearly you're breaking up. I'll have to disconnect." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "bzzzzt."

Then closed the transmission.

Blaytz snorted, "And he says I'm undisciplined."

* * *

Lotor was still crying. He just wasn't wailing. Instead, he'd managed to wear himself out to the point of being reduced to a series of teary eyed whimpers.

Zarkon knew he should just be grateful that the child had stopped screaming. Really, Lotor didn't need to stop crying for his father to go back to bed, he just needed to lower his volume enough to make sleep possible. Now that this was the case, there was really no need for him to stay.

Zarkon lingered by the door.

He didn't need to be here. He didn't have any training in raising children, and his attempts to garner advice had all drawn blanks. There was nothing he could think to do to properly soothe Lotor, so he was better off just going back to bed and leaving the boy be. Being left alone for a few hours could hardly hurt the child.

Besides, Zarkon had begun to fear that he had been growing… soft.

He loved Honerva and Lotor. He did. But having a family often resulted in acting in certain ways that rather altered one's reputation amongst their enemies.

And he'd been coddling Lotor.

Sure he was barely a year old, but Zarkon certainly couldn't recall having anyone around to soothe him when he was a child and he'd turned out alright. More or less.

One day his son was going to have to face much worse things than sitting alone in his nursery at night crying to himself. If Zarkon's own father had been in the room, he'd have told his son to stop being so softhearted and leave the boy to "learn to look after himself."

Old Zeppo hadn't been much for the softer child rearing techniques.

A small hiccup, more like the squeak of a small animal than that of a child, cut through Zarkon's thoughts.

Sighing to himself over the loss of his own integrity, Zarkon lifted the baby from the crib and held him in his arms. His crying didn't cease, just like they hadn't ceased when he'd picked him up for the first time all those hours ago. Though now he wasn't kicking as much.

Zarkon headed back to his own room, absentmindedly stroking Lotor's head as the baby whimpered into his shoulder.

If nothing else, he could at least hold the boy until morning. At which point he could hand him off to some servants or, if she had returned by then, Dayak, and try to get some sleep in.

It was a damnable thing to show weakness about, but Zarkon hadn't the willpower to resist. Lotor had just looked so pitiable sitting there in his crib all alone. Sentimentality like that would be a hindrance. He would have to begin hardening his heart if he had any chance of raising this child to be a proper warrior.

Stepping into the royal bedchamber, Zarkon eased himself into the bed and leaned back into the pillows. He might as well get comfortable. It was several hours yet before it was properly morning.

Still stroking Lotors unkempt tufts of white hair, Zarkon couldn't help but feel dejected. Being a father wasn't quite turning out how he'd imagined it would. He loved Lotor, was proud of every new stage in his development. But when it came to actually caring for the boy, he found himself being rather inept.

He couldn't even stop the child from crying for quiznaking sake!

Every time he interacted with the baby he always felt he was being too soft when he should be hard, and too hard when he should be soft. He struggled to be properly gentle, when the most fragile thing he'd ever held was a chalice. Even the volume of his voice was something he struggled to properly modulate to infant ears.

Being soft, gentle, and quiet didn't come naturally to Zarkon. Just having sufficient patience was a struggle.

Zarkon let his weight sink into the pillows. He closed his eyes and dozed a bit.

"I must admit, Lotor." Zarkon almost chuckled, "No other opponent I've had has ever managed to wear me down like this."

There was, naturally, no reply. Nothing but silence.

Silence.

Zarkon stopped, and looked at Lotor.

He wasn't quite asleep, but there were no longer tears rolling down his cheeks. Instead, he'd buried his face into his father's shoulder, his tiny fist gripping Zarkon's nightgown. His whimpering had ceased.

As he stared, Zarkon stopped the stroking of his large taloned fingers. Almost instantly, Lotor began to whine and whimper once more. Gently and deliberately, Zarkon moved his fingers through his son's hair, and the boy was once more content.

Was… was that it? Was that all that had needed to be done?

Against his better judgement, Zarkon chuckled to himself, "I'll have to tell your mother about this."

Then he leaned back, and watched out the window as Daibazaal's sun slowly rose over the horizon.


End file.
